Egypt's Gasc bought just 55,000 tonnes of wheat at its latest
tender, its smallest purchase of the season, after just three merchants offered
grain – and one of those used the wrong documentation.

Gasc, the grain authority for the world's top wheat
importing country purchased 55,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat, from merchant
Venus, at $289 a tonne, plus $13.49 a tonne in freight.

The deal underlined Gasc's willingness to keep buying from
Ukraine despite the country's economic and political turmoil.

Indeed, it took the authority's total purchases from Ukraine
above 1.0m tonnes for 2013-14.

Dearth of offers

But Gasc failed to enjoy a financial reward for its loyalty,
paying $3.13 a tonne, or 1.1%, more for its Ukraine wheat this time than it did at its last tender, two weeks ago, when it also purchased from Venus.

This increase came despite a fall of 6.0% in Chicago prices
over the two weeks, during which Paris prices have fallen by 3.2%.

However, the authority had little choice over today's
purchase, being offered just 230,000 tonnes of wheat, less than one-third of the
volumes it could typically expect, and with half of that, from Bunge,
disqualified because of incorrect paperwork.

There were, unusually, no offers of Russian wheat, although
the tender results came as SovEcon cautioned over the thinness of the country's
remaining supplies, saying that unexpectedly strong exports meant that "a significant
portion of the remaining stocks of old wheat crop have been taken away from the
domestic market".

The Moscow-based consultancy raised to 18.4m tonnes from
17.8m tonnes, its forecast for Russian wheat exports in 2013-14.

But SovEcon cautioned that stocks were so low that exports
in July, the first month 2014-15, might fall below the 2.0m tonnes a year
before because of the low level of carryover supplies.

'A bit picky'

The low level of offers to Gasc reflected the dearth of inventories
in Russia and some other countries too.